I have to admit, I was not impressed when Mark Fox was hired. After nine years at Georgia, his team had been to the NCAA Tournament just twice and never made it past the first round. I am pleased to say that Fox has far surpassed my expectations for his first year. Despite losing a lot of talent to transfers, he has already won eight conference games, which is three more than Wyking Jones won in two seasons at the helm. The Bears are far better on defense, tougher overall, and have shown they can be competitive with the best teams in the conference. Granted, this is only his far year, and moving a team from awful to respectability is not the same as contending for a spot in the NCAA tournament every year (my hope for the program). Still, I have to give credit where it is due. It is nice to be pleasantly surprised.

"Despite losing a lot of talent to transfers.."

Their exit freed up playing time for non quitting winners. It will be interesting to track the success or lack thereof of those that bailed.

This Man that stayed has 5 times the talent of the headband and the man bun:*



* The fact you can even sport those affectations during and after a record setting 16 consecutive losses was telling.

mdbear said:

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I have to admit, I was not impressed when Mark Fox was hired. After nine years at Georgia, his team had been to the NCAA Tournament just twice and never made it past the first round. I am pleased to say that Fox has far surpassed my expectations for his first year. Despite losing a lot of talent to transfers, he has already won eight conference games, which is three more than Wyking Jones won in two seasons at the helm. The Bears are far better on defense, tougher overall, and have shown they can be competitive with the best teams in the conference. Granted, this is only his far year, and moving a team from awful to respectability is not the same as contending for a spot in the NCAA tournament every year (my hope for the program). Still, I have to give credit where it is due. It is nice to be pleasantly surprised.

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Isn't it more fun to be following an improving team, no matter what the level of play? Small correction: Fox has won 7 conference games, not 8. Still a shot at 9 wins, a .500 PAC12 season and a remote shot in getting a first round bye in the PAC12 tournament.

Go Bears!

I can't help but believe Trent Johnson has had significant input into the Bears' success. Not many programs are fortunate enough to have an assistant coach with 17 years of HC experience. When the Bears were in close games in the last two minutes this season I had complete confidence we could win. The previous 4 years I knew we had no chance to win such a game.

He'll fully win me over when he signs his first high 4-star or 5-star recruit. Until then, I am skeptical about his recruiting ability. I've already seen in person one of his incoming recruits and that player is not going to move the needle to where it needs to be.

Yes, of course, he deserves three years from his hiring to implement his plan, and it is nice that this year he's given us reasons to be optimistic.

Indeed--Let me repeat what I've said earlier this year. Fox' long-term success will depend, to a considerable extant, on who leaves and who arrives at the conclusion of this year. Fox sustained a serious blow when three very good players decided to leave at the end of last year. No Coach should be expected to succeed long-term if he is met with a another significant exodus of top players without an offset of equally talented players arriving before next fall. Therefore, I don't know whether to be optimistic. Only time will tell.

" Fox' long-term success will depend, to a considerable extent, on who leaves..."

Who the f that is worth a sh@it is leaving? What are you even talking about?

" Fox sustained a serious blow when three very good players decided to leave at the end of last year....... exodus of top players...."

I think Darius McNeill would have flourished under this coaching staff. I really liked that young man and it hurt that he left.

With regard to the Headband, he would have been in Matt Bradley's way. With regard to the Man Bun, the key to this team's improvement was defensive intensity. The Man Bun couldn't D up a 6 th grade CYO player driving to the hoop. With regard to his circus act trey ball, no one bothered to guard him because we were a 16 consecutive loss team. I will formally apologize if he ends up being an impact player at Arkansas. When he was in the game, it was 5 vs 4 when Bears were on D. Good f'ing riddance to those two.

bearister said:

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" Fox' long-term success will depend, to a considerable extent, on who leaves..."

Who the f that is worth a sh@it is leaving? What are you even talking about?

" Fox sustained a serious blow when three very good players decided to leave at the end of last year....... exodus of top players...."

I think Darius McNeill would have flourished under this coaching staff. I really liked that young man and it hurt that he left.

With regard to the Headband, he would have been in Matt Bradley's way. With regard to the Man Bun, the key to this team's improvement was defensive intensity. The Man Bun couldn't D up a 6 th grade CYO player driving to the hoop. With regard to his circus act trey ball, no one bothered to guard him because we were a 16 consecutive loss team. I will formally apologize if he ends up being an impact player at Arkansas. When he was in the game, it was 5 vs 4 when Bears were on D. Good f'ing riddance to those two.

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1. I think most everybody is assuming there will be scholarship players "departing before their time" at the end of this season. Two months ago, one might've speculated that it could be players that we wanted to keep, but now I'd say that it'll probably only be players that will "help free up scholarships".

2. I can't WAIT to see how Vanover does next season. One of us is going to be formally apologizing. His defense was unbelievably bad the first several games last season, but he had become something resembling a rim protector by March. As for Sueing, he was a pretty good player, but I didn't care for his too-cool-for-this-team demeanor.

As to the original post in this thread, yes, I wasn't thrilled by the Fox hire either, but things are working out better than I had expected. Way to go, Mark Fox: Keep up the good work!

...but Big C, I am formally putting the burden on you to resurrect this thread if Man Bun kills it at Arkansas and make me eat my words ( the search terms are BearInsider bearister Man Bun and you will bring find this thread pronto).

SFCityBear said:

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mdbear said:

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I have to admit, I was not impressed when Mark Fox was hired. After nine years at Georgia, his team had been to the NCAA Tournament just twice and never made it past the first round. I am pleased to say that Fox has far surpassed my expectations for his first year. Despite losing a lot of talent to transfers, he has already won eight conference games, which is three more than Wyking Jones won in two seasons at the helm. The Bears are far better on defense, tougher overall, and have shown they can be competitive with the best teams in the conference. Granted, this is only his far year, and moving a team from awful to respectability is not the same as contending for a spot in the NCAA tournament every year (my hope for the program). Still, I have to give credit where it is due. It is nice to be pleasantly surprised.

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Isn't it more fun to be following an improving team, no matter what the level of play? Small correction: Fox has won 7 conference games, not 8. Still a shot at 9 wins, a .500 PAC12 season and a remote shot in getting a first round bye in the PAC12 tournament.

Go Bears!

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Nit: there's no chance of a first round bye since there's 5 teams with 10+ wins and the most we can get is 9 wins.

" Vanover was the reason Cal was respectable late last year." When were we respectable, before or after the 16 consecutive losses?

I never said Lars was better than Vanover in my rant above. I did suggest it at the beginning of this season when Lars looked like he had potential....but he ended up having a 7 foot project player season. I would be willing to compare their stats during their 4th seasons and put $50 on Lars. I am also happy Kelly got any minutes Vanover would have taken away from him. If Vanover's team is good enough where his three ball is going to beat you, they will put a man on him. He is a catch and shoot guy. He can't free up with a dribble and he can't jump, and my recollection was almost all of his 3's were uncontested.
Let's see if he does jack for the Razorbacks. Now I have to put them on my ESPN favorites list.

I agree with Greg about Vanover. Losing him was a tough loss. He was a very potent offensive weapon and with his size on the perimeter, he was basically unguardable. He was slow and weak as a frosh which made him a non-factor in the post offensively and required us to hide him in a zone defensively, but his length could still alter or block shots. It would be interesting to see how Fox would have used him. Clearly, Fox wants to go man to man as a primary defense with a zone as a change of pace and that's tough with Vanover. But I'm sure he could have liked the perimeter shooting. Of the three departures, I think Vanover was the biggest.

As for Fox, he's clearly shown his coaching mettle. He's done an incredible job with not a ton of talent and that's really impressive. In some ways, it's not surprising because it seemed all along like he was a high floor coach because of his focus on fundamentals.

If I had one concern for the future, it's about how his style of play will entice recruits. He may be a low flor coach but can he also be a high ceiling coach that can bring in talent? I'm not sure. He plays a pretty non-sexy brand of basketball with a focus on being conservative and limiting mistakes. I've heard him tell high school coaches that if was an AAU coach, he'd win the summer league simply by making his guys get back on defense to limit transition. How many AAU coaches would say that? But he's right. And he knows what it takes to win. But like Tony Bennett at UVA who has never been successful landing big time recruits (he's tried) for his style of play, would Fox be any different? And would it even matter? Lord knows UVA has been elite against a lot of big names with a ton of Mickey Ds. So does it matter if he doesn't bring in a bunch of top 100 guys? TBD. But a helluva first season.

KoreAmBear said:

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I think we need to be very careful with basketball players from Mater Dei. That is just a transfer culture over there.

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My favorite transfer story is the journey of Joe Montana's sons. Between the two of the them they went to 7 colleges looking for the glass slipper to fit. It never did.

bearister said:

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I can't help but believe Trent Johnson has had significant input into the Bears' success. Not many programs are fortunate enough to have an assistant coach with 17 years of HC experience.

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I was about to say the same thing. There was a tv shot of Fox and Trent sitting next to each other on the bench during the last game. We were up on Utah - playing great defense with an organized offense. That gave me the feeling that everything's going to be good with these guys in charge.

This team has far exceeded my expectations. Fox & company certainly made lemonade out of lemons. Ultimately, Fox's success will be impacted by his ability to recruit, which is to be determined.

wifeisafurd said:

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This team has far exceeded my expectations. Fox & company certainly made lemonade out of lemons. Ultimately, Fox's success will be impacted by his ability to recruit, which is to be determined.

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I agree that he needs to recruit elite talent for the team to take the next step, but I thought he did a remarkable job pulling together his first class given the circumstances he stepped into.

pierrezo said:

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bearister said:

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I can't help but believe Trent Johnson has had significant input into the Bears' success. Not many programs are fortunate enough to have an assistant coach with 17 years of HC experience.

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I was about to say the same thing. There was a tv shot of Fox and Trent sitting next to each other on the bench during the last game. We were up on Utah - playing great defense with an organized offense. That gave me the feeling that everything's going to be good with these guys in charge.

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Agree that Trent is a big part of our coaching team

However there are plenty of examples of prior assistants becoming lead assistances

In our conference alone, there have been jay John and Ken bone, and Romar (one year at AZ)

I would imagine Mark considers Trent a mentor that added an important part to his coaching knowledge. A coach can either run away from or run towards a coach that he served under for 4 years. We know which way Mark ran, and I am very glad he did.

I'm going to reserve judgement of Fox's coaching right now. He has done a great job of getting this team to buy in and play hard, which is only part of the battle. Getting a team to not get their asses handed to them night in and night out is a great skill, yes, but can he get Cal back to the tournament? Can he get this team to the top 4, 5 in the conference consistently? Maybe, but first we need to get some recruiting traction. Otherwise, we are about at our floor, but our ceiling will pretty close to where we are as well. Sorry, but I'm still not sold on Fox.

parentswerebears said:

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I'm going to reserve judgement of Fox's coaching right now. He has done a great job of getting this team to buy in and play hard, which is only part of the battle. Getting a team to not get their asses handed to them night in and night out is a great skill, yes, but can he get Cal back to the tournament? Can he get this team to the top 4, 5 in the conference consistently? Maybe, but first we need to get some recruiting traction. Otherwise, we are about at our floor, but our ceiling will pretty close to where we are as well. Sorry, but I'm still not sold on Fox.

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Honestly what you're saying is that its simply too soon to make a final call. NOBODY expected this team to finish in the top half of the Pac12 this year. Right now its just about the eye test. Except the for the occasional glitches in Utah and Washington, its been clear that over the last few weeks that any games this team is losing is not due to coaching. Fox deserves a solid "pass" vs fail in this department.

Now it comes down to recruiting and if good recruits come in can the coach rise the program to the next level. Gonna need at least 2 more years to figure this out.

It's not just recruiting. It's whether Fox can change his style of play to (1) attract recruits or (2) deal with the players he has. I think the style of play this year was dictated more by the personnel than any coaching philosophy other than "let's do what gives us the best chance to win". One of Jones' early failures was trying to implement the Syracuse press without the players to run it successfully for a full game. We will never know if Fox would have coached differently this year if McNeil and Sueing had stayed.

Fox does have the choice to simply recruit players that match his natural philosophy and want to play that style (more of the Ben Howland method?) or to recruit the best athletes (not necessarily a different group) and modify to take advantage of those talents.

There was the old joke that the only person who kept Michael Jordan from getting 20 points a game was Dean Smith. But Dean Smith did change his style of play as the players who came to Carolina changed.

For all those on the fence still: Who could have done a better job this year???

Kinda weird tangent. In an alternative reality were everything stays the same Bears are definitely better with Vannover than Lars this year. Kelly slides to start in the PF with a rotation of Vannover, Kelly and Thorpe. With options of using just one if we "go small". I assume in this counterfactual that Lars went elsewhere. That fully opens up the outside and allows the Bears to do a lot more things.

Sueing and McNeil are the more interesting "what ifs". Justice's body language was awful last year - and it just isn't clear to me that this isn't addition by subtraction. McNeil I think would have thrived but he would have been at the Off guard - and I am not sure that South isn't better there.

But you know, transfers are the new normal in college ball. You will drive yourself batty if you spend more than a nano-second on it. Sorta like wondering what would have happened if Lee had scouts and understood just how rotten ground he had to fight on at Gettysburg.

>> "Our fans have been tremendous," Fox said. "I want them all to bring a friend next year."

Hey ATO Marketing people...how about "Bring A Friend" for all OOC games next year??? Bring a friend, charge them $5 at the gate and fill Haas the F up. Seriously, Fox just gave you the quote you need for next year.

sandiegobears said:

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>> "Our fans have been tremendous," Fox said. "I want them all to bring a friend next year."

Hey ATO Marketing people...how about "Bring A Friend" for all OOC games next year??? Bring a friend, charge them $5 at the gate and fill Haas the F up. Seriously, Fox just gave you the quote you need for next year.

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"Bring A Friend" >> "Invest And Attack".

Dear Bearister: I'm deeply concerned about your reading comprehension as well as your tendency to use expletives in an unseemly manner. You present as young and angry. I instructed my terminally ill hamster to read my post to see if he could detect any factual or grammatical errors. He said it was fine in all respects. Your retort convinces me that , in addition to Civics, Reading Comprehension is no longer taught in the fourth grade. More is the pity.

Big C said:

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2. I can't WAIT to see how Vanover does next season. One of us is going to be formally apologizing. His defense was unbelievably bad the first several games last season, but he had become something resembling a rim protector by March. As for Sueing, he was a pretty good player, but I didn't care for his too-cool-for-this-team demeanor.

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I'd say Vanover was playing a lot better at the end of his frosh season than Thiemann on any occasion I've witnessed. I expect Vanover to have an impact as a redshirt soph.

I'm not so sure about Sueing as his game is more conventional than Vanover's. I'll be interested to see how he fits on a good Ohio State team, I'm guessing he'll be a solid player there.

bearister said:

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" Vanover was the reason Cal was respectable late last year." When were we respectable, before or after the 16 consecutive losses?

I never said Lars was better than Vanover in my rant above. I did suggest it at the beginning of this season when Lars looked like he had potential....but he ended up having a 7 foot project player season. I would be willing to compare their stats during their 4th seasons and put $50 on Lars. I am also happy Kelly got any minutes Vanover would have taken away from him. If Vanover's team is good enough where his three ball is going to beat you, they will put a man on him. He is a catch and shoot guy. He can't free up with a dribble and he can't jump, and my recollection was almost all of his 3's were uncontested.
Let's see if he does jack for the Razorbacks. Now I have to put them on my ESPN favorites list.

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A skinny 7' kid who hadn't grown into his man's body couldn't take guys off the dribble or play good man defense? Shocking.

Guys like that usually aren't going to be ready their first year and he wasn't. But I'm betting he will come back from this year off a lot stronger and more mobile. And he provides two valuable things for any team - rim protection and enough shooting to stretch the floor for others. He was the one guy I was sorry to see leave.

GoCal80 said:

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wifeisafurd said:

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This team has far exceeded my expectations. Fox & company certainly made lemonade out of lemons. Ultimately, Fox's success will be impacted by his ability to recruit, which is to be determined.

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I agree that he needs to recruit elite talent for the team to take the next step, but I thought he did a remarkable job pulling together his first class given the circumstances he stepped into.

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I disagree that he needs to recruit elite talent. He needs to recruit good players who will fit and who will be here for a few years. He's show the ability to develop players, and there are a lot of players out there who aren't top-50 who have the raw materials to be very good with coaching.

Elite talent is great, but he needs to get this program on the kind of footing that will make elite talent consider coming. That will take some time and won't be built on AA types.

bluesaxe said:

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bearister said:

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" Vanover was the reason Cal was respectable late last year." When were we respectable, before or after the 16 consecutive losses?

I never said Lars was better than Vanover in my rant above. I did suggest it at the beginning of this season when Lars looked like he had potential....but he ended up having a 7 foot project player season. I would be willing to compare their stats during their 4th seasons and put $50 on Lars. I am also happy Kelly got any minutes Vanover would have taken away from him. If Vanover's team is good enough where his three ball is going to beat you, they will put a man on him. He is a catch and shoot guy. He can't free up with a dribble and he can't jump, and my recollection was almost all of his 3's were uncontested.
Let's see if he does jack for the Razorbacks. Now I have to put them on my ESPN favorites list.

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A skinny 7' kid who hadn't grown into his man's body couldn't take guys off the dribble or play good man defense? Shocking.

Guys like that usually aren't going to be ready their first year and he wasn't. But I'm betting he will come back from this year off a lot stronger and more mobile. And he provides two valuable things for any team - rim protection and enough shooting to stretch the floor for others. He was the one guy I was sorry to see leave.

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I just don't see Lars having the "frame" to grow into a "man". Rather sorta the ceiling of say a David K. Not sure that is enough though - as David would routinely get abused by the top bigs in the conference.

I guess that is the question to ask Bears fans - if Lars "tops out" (with a LOT of work) at the David K level is that enough? What would you have to put around him to make it work (I THINK a really good banging Power forward who can guard one and done studs that come into the conference "NBA body ready")